Apple to take MHz fight to the people

When I read this news over at MacOS Rumors, it was darn near time for another episode of When Damage Attacks. Stuck semi-permanently at 500MHz thanks to the G4 processor's high-IPC, "advanced RISC" design, the Apple ad gurus are cranking up the hype machine to take some air out of the MHz myth:

You're going to like this one, folks: according to the report, there will be not one but at least two spots designed specifically to address the megahertz issue. The far greater power of the G3 and G4 per clock cycle will be directly expounded upon and there may even be a TV-ified version of Steve's infamous Mac vs. Wintel races to complete a common task.

(In this case, a "common task" is defined as "crashing," "issuing an incompatiblity warning," or "going completely out of date.")

While I'm all for edjumicating the public about clock speeds versus performance, this is going to be one very tough sell. PCs are running at three times the clock rate of Macs, and the G4's clock-for-clock performance advantage isn't nearly that pronounced. PCs are flat-out faster.

You'd think Jobs & Co. would take the sensible way out and start buying faster G4 chips from IBM. But you would be wrong.